Planning Ahead

When I signed up for this program initially, I signed on for one semester, with the understanding that I could, and probably would, extend my contract for the full school year, provided things went well in the first month or so. Well, the time has come for me to decide, and after much soul searching, I’ve come to the conclusion that one semester will probably be the right amount of time, and that I won’t be coming back in January.

This has been a very hard decision to make, because I know that I am still very much in the process of adjusting to life and work in this country, and that many things may change between now and December. And I am happy, for the most part. However, I didn’t realize before I came just how difficult it would be to have so little contact with other English speakers, when I don’t speak Georgian or Megrelian, and even more importantly, how difficult it would be to try to teach kids when I don’t speak their language. I had thought that any sort of classroom teaching experience would be good for me in my quest to become a history teacher, but it’s become very evident just how big the gulf is between the kind of teaching I want to be doing professionally and the kind of teaching I’m doing here. For these reasons, and for many others that I don’t need to go into, I think that I’ll get the most out of this experience if I limit it to four months.

That said, I hope to do a fair amount of traveling in the time that I have, since the different parts of the country have very different physical and cultural characters. A nice first step was a weekend trip with my host family to visit Marika’s family in a nearby village. I got to see the local castle, and to meet the 82-year-old family matriarch, who remembers when Stalin spent the night in the village when she was a little girl. There are also plans afoot to visit the mountainous Svaneti region before it gets too snowy, but I’ll wait to write more about that until the plans are more definite.

I’m also certainly not giving up at integrating myself better into the family and the community. I’m determined to learn my way around the kitchen, to start with, so that I can make some food myself, as well as hopefully learn how to make some traditional Georgian dishes. I’ll let you know how it goes!